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All those years, Denton Harris believed lightning bugs signaled rain -- only to find out the white-hot light of the firefly sends a mating call.
A SMALL OBITUARY in the New York Times brought a gush of memories that took me back to my childhood. Quote: “John B. Buck, 92, a biologist whose studies of fireflies advanced understanding of their behavior, died Wednesday.”
Let me explain why this death notice caused my mind to whirl in thoughts of fun-filled times of many years ago. Of course, I’d never heard those fascinating flies called “fireflies;” they were universally known in my limited world as “lightning bugs.”
My folks were poor farmers. In fact, we didn’t own the farm, but we were “tenant farmers,” which meant we had to work long and hard hours from dawn to dusk. Each night after a big supper on hot days, we sat on the front porch until our house, with its tin roof, cooled off. Or as some said, “until the dew fell, and it got cooler.”
Firefly Sightings
Often as we sat on that porch, we saw lightning bugs. At times they seemed to be everywhere; other times, far less in numbers. The adults predicted weather from the action of the bugs. If they flew low and their lights were bright, it meant rain was possible the next day.
A favorite game was to see how many bugs we kids could catch. We put them in a Mason jar with a perforated lid, where they could live for several days. Watching them flash their lights so close to our faces gave a big thrill. We even tried to place the page of a book where we could see the print in absolute darkness. Remember, there were no outside lights in the country.
If We Knew Then...
Had we known as much about our lightning bugs as John Buck discovered in his studies, I wonder if it would have made us kids more interested and curious? Or would it have taken away the fascination, joy and mystery of those wonderful little bugs? Sometimes too much knowledge tends to destroy creative thinking.
This man Buck spent four decades pursuing research in bioluminescence in soft corals and other organisms that somehow relate to his fireflies.
Lightning Bug Love
After establishing that his fireflies (our lightning bugs) were flashing codes of light and did indeed synchronize their signals, he and others explained their behavior as primarily a mating call in which male flies were attracting females. And all the time we thought flying low and giving off a stronger light predicted rain — but it was really those great little bugs looking for the opposite sex!
Buck’s studies may have given credence to other scientific studies, but the fertile imagination of a poor farm boy brought me closer to the marvels and mysteries of nature.
Now, many years later, they are still “lightning bugs” to me, and I predict we may have rain tomorrow! 
August